Comments on: The uncertain future of hit comedyhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/
Canada's national weekly current affairs magazineSat, 10 Dec 2016 02:41:42 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.2By: Jaime Weinmanhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054985
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:43:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054985Yes, it is. I may have glossed over it but I did say it was the last real hit the non-CBS networks have managed to come up with. One thing I’ve said in previous posts is that I think the mockumentary format has almost become its own separate thing, more broadly popular than the other single-camera formats. (“The Office” is still NBC’s most popular comedy, and its second highest-rated comedy is “Parks & Recreation.”) One thing I didn’t realize about the Michael J. Fox show when I wrote the above post is that apparently it plans to include some talking-head segments in the style of “Modern Family” and “The Office,” which if so may give it a better chance at mainstream success.
]]>By: Dahttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054983
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:19:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054983Great article, Jamie.

It seems like you’re glossing over the success of Modern Family. I know it’s a critical success, but isn’t it a ratings winner as well?

]]>By: Jaime Weinmanhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054981
Sat, 26 Jan 2013 19:41:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054981Fascinating discussion. Thanks. And yeah, that’s a big part of the dilemma. The three-camera sitcom – or the live-audience radio sitcom – dates from a time when writing a play was the greatest thing a writer could do. Almost every sitcom writer wanted to write a play, and some did (Neil Simon for one). So it was a form that mimicked the joke rhythms and style of the thing that was most prestigious for comedy writers. But theatre comedy is not what it was then (thanks in part to so many TV and radio sitcoms). As late as FRIENDS, the creators were from theatre. Now Even people who do theatre, like Aaron Sorkin, are better known for their film and TV work. Writers aren’t itching to write in that form, and the opportunities for advancement are not what they were when you could dream that a sitcom job would be the step up to that hit Broadway play.
]]>By: TRhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054979
Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:18:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054979Two aspiring writers discussed this piece in Gchat, during work hours. [minimally edited for, mostly, clarity’s sake]:

Writer Number One:
This whole graph is clutch:
“This is a process that isn’t good for the quality cult shows, because like good players on bad teams, they’re not used for their strengths: they’re asked to do things that they were never built to do, and appeal to people who would never watch them.”

I think, for our generation, there’s been such a backlash against multi-cams because they
dominated for so long, so when single-cams started to crop up, it was a breath
of fresh air.

Writing an endearing multi-cam is a wonderful hope. But to what end? Only if multi-cams are more funny and tell a good story, right? Otherwise, it just becomes a bottom-line issue; I think networks need to give up the Friends ghost, for starters, and then try to be a place that content creators want to work. I mean, when people–whether
they’re critics or showrunners or network execs–talk about the current sitcom quandary, they only seem to mention two things: HOW MUCH MONEY FRIENDS AND SEINFELD MADE and HOW MUCH HEART CHEERS HAD. So, to me, this sends a signal that money and heart is what studios are after. But heart is something you either have or don’t. And
you can always throw money at something. It’s called “marketing.”

And an other thing: studios need to be looking ahead–they can’t be looking at an older (and let’s be honest: dying) generation to carry a multi-cam.

Writer Number Two: And they have to remember that Friends and Seinfeld and Cheers had a lot less competition than TV shows now have.

Writer Number One: So how do you get people like you and me on board with a multi-cam–something that we’re almost preconditioned to loath, because we grew up with three times as many bad ones, as we did good ones?

Writer Number Two: No clue – not to mention how important casting is. And how that can carry or drag down a show.

Writer Number One: For better or worse, the comedy community isn’t making multi-cam type material. The boldest minds in comedy are doing what they always do: they’re making stuff like IMMORTAL DOG and Archer.

Which leads to this: can multi-cams challenge our tastes in comedy–can they ask us to broaden and appreciate new things–or is that not the role of multi-cam comedy? What is a multi-cam’s raison d’être? I have a much clearer idea of what I want from a single cam than I do a multi-cam–as a viewer, and as a writer.

But yet, I’ve got decades more viewing years ahead of me than people who only watch multi-cams. So from a business standpoint, how do you convince someone
like me that mulit-cams are worth having? That they can add to the comedy landscape, and not just…bum me out.

Writer Number Two: There needs to be a stronger bridge between the types of live comedy UCB is doing and multi cams. What if they were (and logistically this would be a nightmare) truly Live shows a la 30 Rock’s?

Writer Number One: I think, in order to attract the talent, you have to be willing to give freedom. (Hmm…I think that it’s an exciting thing to do as one-offs, but not much more). Jon Mulaney just got a multi-cam pilot at NBC.Maybe he’s someone who can turn the medium around and make it appetizing to writers who would rather have the creative freedom and–let’s be honest–integrity to create whatever they want for their particularly
loyal viewers?

Writer Number Two: Maybe Dan Harmon’s new multicam project will do something to help spark something new…assuming it even sees the light of day.

Writer Number One: It’s not that writers our age despise multi-cams, but there needs to be a reason to want to make them. Otherwise, you’re just going to have a bunch of technically good writers who are willing to sell out for big network dollars.

Essentially, studios are asking young writers to do what no one has ever been asked to do before: make a cutting edge comedy that everyone wants to hug.

]]>By: JBhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054977
Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:28:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054977Probably wise to pass on this comedy. Do with it as you wish.

b) TV no longer relies entirely on bums on settees at home at specific times, but it still relies for the foreseeable future on having people actually watch the stuff.

c) If television is in decline, so what? Lots of media have declined in influence and power and remained relevant, or else I don’t see why there have still been movie critics since TV reduced the power of movies.

]]>By: JBhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054971
Thu, 24 Jan 2013 02:58:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054971Jeez you write lots about tv, goggle-box, chewing gum for the eyes. TV’s days are over. And that saddens me. Not the loss, but how its power has been diminished. All demise ought to be properly managed. And all I see is same old same old especially in the UK (BBC and Channel 4 kinda holding some semblance of quality). It can’t be easy managing a media in decline that relies on bums on settees at home at specific times.
]]>By: Jaime Weinmanhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054969
Thu, 24 Jan 2013 02:04:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054969It’s very much a depends-who-you-ask kind of thing. One thing is that single-camera is of course like a movie, and people who come from or want to get into movies tend to prefer it. Someone who’s written a feature (like the creator of “New Girl”) or has just made an independent film is going to find studio-audience comedy a bit foreign.

Then, too, multi-camera comedy was so dominant for so long (pretty much for 30 years, from 1970 to 2000) they tended to be associated with the things people found hacky about sitcoms. And I think there is a self-reinforcing dynamic, but it’s based on the fact that by the ’00s there were so many terrible multi-camera sitcoms to point to and so few good ones.

I also think on some level single-camera is just better equipped to survive the amount of network interference shows undergo today. Broadcast network shows get a ton of notes, and many shows are assigned a senior writer/producer (usually writers who have previously created unsuccessful shows, like Jenni Konner on “Girls”) whose job it is to baby-sit the less experienced creator and see he or she doesn’t get too many wild ideas.

A single-camera show can just about get by with all this because it has one line of defense against network interference: the network can’t see it in full until the episode is filmed and edited. With a multi-camera show, the whole thing is rehearsed in full all week, analyzed for weaknesses, rewritten, reblocked, and then performed in front of an audience. That’s part of what makes multi-camera shows more likely to connect with a broad audience, but it also allows network executives to be there, all the time, putting in their oar. The chance of what happened with Seinfeld – where the network didn’t interfere much, and the experienced writer assigned to baby-sit Larry David left the show after only a few episodes – seems almost from another world.

]]>By: Drewhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054967
Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:47:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054967Forgive my TV naïveté, but I don’t understand why there is such a big quality difference between single cam and multicam comedies. Is it something inherent in the single camera format itself that lends itself to these kinds of quirky comedies, or is it a self-reinforcing dynamic wherein people think single cam comedies are better, so those attract the better talent?
]]>By: Jaime Weinmanhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054965
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:19:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054965Both were big hits on broadcast before they went into syndication. Syndication exposure has helped their ratings in prime time, which is why Big Bang’s ratings have gone up rather than down: more people are finding it in syndication. However, it doesn’t work for every show. Single-camera comedy in particular is notorious for under-performing in syndication (or at least it has been since they stopped adding laugh tracks; M*A*S*H and The Brady Bunch were huge in syndication, but they had the laugh track) so, say, “The Office” hasn’t gotten much of a bump from its syndication. But shows that are popular in syndication, like “Family Guy” or “Big Bang Theory,” do seem to create some ratings improvement for the new episodes.

Basically almost every comedy that reaches 100 episodes (sometimes less) gets sold into syndication. The tricky thing is that some do well and some don’t, so frequently a hit comedy will sell into syndication at huge prices, and then not perform as well as expected. There’s a long history of hit shows like “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Happy Days” doing disappointingly in syndication while shows that were lesser hits in prime time, like “The Odd Couple,” doing amazingly. It’s hard to predict what will do well in syndication except that syndicated hits tend to skew towards men.

]]>By: Aaron Morrowhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/the-uncertain-future-of-hit-comedy/#comment-1054963
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:57:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340834#comment-1054963I am completely unaware of when/how BBT and Two and a Half Men became hits, but I do see that they’re also big in syndication. Which came first? Did they hits once people started watching them 5/7 days a week, or did they make it to syndication because they were already popular?
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